West wins round in recount fight

Florida Rep. Allen West, trailing narrowly in his still-uncalled race, notched a legal win late Friday, as election officials agreed to re-tabulate a batch of early ballots that the conservative congressman has pushed to have reexamined.

The St. Lucie County Supervisor of Elections announced it would begin re-tallying all votes that were cast between Oct. 27 and Nov. 3. The office will begin re-tabulating at 9 a.m. Saturday.

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West has argued that those votes had been accidentally double counted on election night and provided a winning margin to his Democratic opponent, 29-year-old construction company executive Patrick Murphy. Murphy’s lead of nearly 2,000 votes is just outside the 0.5 percent margin that would trigger an automatic district-wide recount under Florida law.

The decision capped a day of dramatic legal maneuverings, which began Friday afternoon when a judge turned down a request by West to prevent St. Lucie County, one of three counties in the 18th Congressional District, from certifying its election results. The battle then moved to the election office’s canvassing board, which convened hours later to determine whether to re-tabulate the votes in question.

While lawyers for West argued that questions surrounding the counting of ballots on election night necessitated a re-checking, Murphy’s team, which has declared victory in the race and is looking to defend its lead, insisted there was no legal cause to conduct a re-tally.

“The votes were fairly counted the first time and it is outside the legal recount margin,” Eric Johnson, a Murphy senior advisor, wrote in an email. “The canvassing board is not following the law. You can’t keep counting until you reach the result you desire.”

The elections office has admitted making mistakes in counting the ballots, saying there was an error in feeding memory cards from voting machines through the vote-counting system. At a press conference earlier this week, the office’s supervisor, Gertrude Walker, said workers had acted in “haste” to get results out to the public on election night and that “mistakes were made.”

The Florida secretary of state office said it was “concerned” about the situation and intervened this week, sending a team of auditors to the office to determine what errors had been made.

On Sunday, the St. Lucie Supervisor of Elections re-tabulated early votes cast between Nov. 1 and Nov. 3, which diminished Murphy’s lead slightly. But the office said on Friday they would examine those ballots once again because it had found a box containing 304 early ballots cast in that period that had not yet been counted.

West’s advisers expressed satisfaction with the ruling, but said they still planned to press for a full recount of all absentee ballots cast. They also said they were considering filing a lawsuit contesting the election.

St. Lucie County has until Sunday at noon to certify its results, and Florida has until Tuesday to finalize the results from all three of the counties that comprise the district. West’s lawyers would have until 10 days after Tuesday — Nov. 30 — to file a contest of the election.

“Bottom line is, we are just starting,” Chris LaCivita, a top West strategist, wrote in an email. “Too early to take any options off the table.”

Readers' Comments (93)

Another Conservative denying the existence of reality. Somebody should do a recount on how many stupid things this guy says in a day. Adios, Allen West, there are a lot of used cars out there and they aren't selling themselves.

@Renascent - Considering how much conservatives have done to make sure that people DON'T vote, I find your call for fairness rather amusing.

Let's even set aside the fact that a vote from prom king at any given high school is more democratic than an election in Florida. Funny how a state with a conservative legislature has a fundamentally flawed voting system that just can't ever seem to get it right. Coincidence?

Oh, and the messy inconvenient truth that Florida routinely (and illegally) takes away the right to vote from its citizens. Does that bother you @Renascent?

After less than two years in Congress, Rep. Allen West has raised $15 million to get himself re-elected.

That’s a mountain of money, but you’d need every dime if your job was to make West look like a calm, responsible person.

His whack-job ranting hasn’t hurt him among the Tea Party faithful, but it threatens the prospects of the 51-year-old Republican since he switched to a new district that includes Martin and St. Lucie counties and part of Palm Beach.

The task for West’s campaign managers is daunting because he has said so many phenomenally offensive and factually indefensible things. Every time the man opens his mouth there’s a moment of high drama:

Please, Al, just stick to the script. We’re begging you.

Back in July, appearing as he does with hungry regularity on Fox News, West likened Social Security disability benefits to “a form of modern, 21st-century slavery.”

In one cold-hearted breath, the retired Army colonel managed to insult 828,000 fellow veterans under the age of 66 who report receiving disability funds from Social Security. These include both active-duty and retired military.

West’s lame effort to mop up his mess occurred the following night (again on Fox), and featured his now-standard attack on the liberal media for twisting his words.

The recurring migraine for West’s handlers is that his words don’t require any twisting. They just spill out of his head that way, usually in front of a television camera, allowing them to be painfully replayed over and over.

It’s been a gold mine for West’s young Democratic opponent, Patrick Murphy, whose most effective campaign ads are a running montage of West’s indelible sound bites.

A favorite is his 2011 speech to a conservative women’s group in which he declared that those who support Planned Parenthood “have been neutering American men and bringing us to the point of this incredible weakness.”

What in the world was West babbling about? Are there mandatory spay clinics for guys?

Who knows what he meant, but it was weirdly fascinating to watch.

He actually went on — and some of this you don’t see in the commercial — to urge his audience “to let them know that we are not going to have our men become subservient .?.?. because if you don’t, then the debt will continue to grow .?.?. deficits will continue to grow.”

Oh, now it all makes perfect sense.

Is West insane? That’s a natural question, but the answer is no. He’s just a fringe gasbag who spices his macho act with a little right-wing paranoia.

Still, it’s possible he really believes that American men are being psychologically emasculated by evil birth-control advocates, and that this is somehow responsible for the nation’s budget deficit.

Likewise, it’s possible West was dead serious when he told a Jensen Beach town hall meeting last April:

“I believe there’s about 78 to 81 members of the Democratic Party who are members of the Communist Party. It’s called the Congressional Progressive Caucus.”

This was a stupendously dumb remark in a community where many are old enough to remember Sen. Joe McCarthy. (Among the current House members whose patriotism West attacked is a Lutheran farmer from Maine, that well-known hotbed of sedition.)

You can see the problem facing West’s campaign team, and you can see why it needs at least $15 million.

This is not an easy makeover.

What do you do with a guy who blogs that voters with Obama bumper stickers are “a threat to the gene pool”?

There are many Obama stickers to be seen in the 18th District along Florida’s Treasure Coast, a fact lost on the arrogant West though not on his pollsters.

Unsurprisingly, most of his money is coming from outside the state.

He’s raised about five times more than Murphy, thanks partly to big checks from the PACs of Exxon Mobil, Northrup-Grumman, Citizens United and OSI Restaurant Partners, which owns Outback and Carrabba’s.

Floridians who buy their groceries at Publix Super Markets might be interested to learn that the company’s executives apparently have no problem with West’s wild slurs. So far Publix has sent him $12,500, through individuals and PACs.

The question is, will all that be enough?

Can $15 million create in the minds of voters a new, unembarrassing Allen West?

If not, he’ll know who to blame:

Planned Parenthood, the secret Communists in Congress, and all those slaves getting disability checks.

Oh, yes, requiring a voter ID is making sure that people don't vote. Just like requiring a state ID at a liquor store is making sure that people don't drink. Your contrived arguments cannot, in the long run, succeed. A rationalization for corruption does democracy no favors.

Think these morons in Florida will ever get this whole democracy thing worked out, to where theyre reasonably comfortable counting ballots and keeping waiting times on Election Day to under 8 hours? Seems like a real steep hill for them to climb at this point.

funny how Demoncraps want every vote to count, no matter how many times it gets counted, but once they achieve their margin of fraud, counting has to stop immediately, "because the people have spoken".

no wonder they only get votes from free stuff and guilt: anyone with an IQ larger than their hat is a conservative.

The Florida Secretary of State’s office said it was “concerned” about the situation and intervened this week, sending a team of auditors to the office to determine what errors had been made.

On Sunday, the St. Lucie Supervisor of Elections re-tabulated early votes cast between Nov. 1 and Nov. 3, which diminished Murphy’s lead slightly. But the office said on Friday they would reexamine those ballots once again because it had found a box containing 304 early ballots cast in that time period that had not yet been counted

TRANSLATION ??????? -- BOYS WE NEED TO FIND ABOUT 8 MORE OF THESE BOXES GUESS FLORIDA IS TOO CLOSE TO SOUTH AMERICAN BANANA REPUBLICS !!!!!!!!

Oh, yes, requiring a voter ID is making sure that people don't vote. Just like requiring a state ID at a liquor store is making sure that people don't drink. Your contrived arguments cannot, in the long run, succeed. A rationalization for corruption does democracy no favors.

Voter ID? Um no. How about setting up voting locations to run out of ballots at 2pm on Election Day? That just happen to be in the most democratic part of the state. How about setting up a ballot that takes a minimum of 30 minutes to read through to slow down the voting process. This of course would affect the most populous and democratic parts of the state more. It also forced thousands of people to vote at 2am in the morning, several hours after the election had been called!!!

This is the result of Republican gerrymandering: West wins by a few votes. What blather. Republicans are so cynical they can't rely on an honest constiutuency but have to gerrymanger seats, no matter how repugnant the GOP candidate. And this is the best they can do? This is their way to the future of America?